


backbone of the devil

by chagrin



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Pining, botched manga characterization, is this ntr? probably, rehashing but also mutilating canon material, why be consistent when you can be disjointed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:49:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15370008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chagrin/pseuds/chagrin
Summary: Like the backbone of the devil, like Jacob’s ladder, the tenuous connection between heaven and earth.





	backbone of the devil

Leaving Ryo to his own devices was his first mistake.

Second was appropriating his claws for blunt implements of torture. Morphing back reveals the extent of the damage: red bathed as far up as his very human forearms. Nails caked with the bloodbath. He wades through the demons he’d torn apart, like pulling apart the tides of an ocean. They’re strewn here and there, testaments to savagery and disarray.

Akira finds Ryo behind the counter, mulling over his gun. He’s toweling it off, head bent low, slouched over a body that’s bent and pulled out of shape, contorted into wrongness. There’s a horror in it entirely disparate from the others, the slick, slimy aftermath where merging with the demon didn’t fully take hold. Poor bastard.

Cocking the rifle, Ryo turns on his heel, ready to blow him apart, until he doesn’t, snapping his gun back to his side.

“Haha! Akira, it’s… I’m fine,” he says, and then he grins, a shivery, debilitated wreck of an expression pulling up at the corners of his mouth. There’s a preternatural fragileness to him, hopscotching over the body, coat stiff and fanned out with blood. He’s small and disarming, otherwise. Absentmindedly, Ryo sweeping the perimeter for survivors, even though they’re both fully aware of the casualties.

Akira levers himself over the countertop and its miscellany of shattered glass. “How many does that make it this time?”

The click of Ryo’s mouth is audible. He’s intense-eyed, shooting upright. “Too many to count. They’ll be gone by tomorrow, once they’re through here. These are terrible times we live in. You can’t depend on anyone.”

“Did he try and get you from behind?” Akira asks, bent down to investigate the entry wound.

“Not at all. He was pretty forward when he attacked me. It’s those kinds of people you should fear the most. They’ve lost the instinct to keep themselves alive. There’s nothing more anyone can do.”

And maybe Akira understands, just like popping his arm back into his socket, and however long it takes him to grow back nails and bones when he’s beaten down within an inch of his life. Each brush with death is that much more severe for it.

The anticipation of pain, the averseness to it; he understands, intimately.

Underneath the retrograding bulb lights overhead, Ryo’s almost feral. Busting into this nest of demons will have its repercussions later, but there’s no particular mindfulness taken when he catches the coat tossed to him. Akira’s unashamed with his nudity, but he’s pulled it up over him all the same. 

It’s probably a sign of trust that Ryo’s turned his back to walk on with the easy convenience of a friend. There’s no telling if Akira’s the exception to the rule, though, or the satisfaction of it. Familiarity breeds contempt. There's room in his heart for doubt.

“Follow me,” he says.

And Akira goes.

  


  


* * *

  


  


Later comes the real madness of butchering so many demons at once, like there’s a higher limit to homicide. Ryo won’t sleep. Up until the early hours of the morning, he’s awake, and it’s left up to him to do what he can about the narcolepsy and lapse of judgment parceled with two, three hours of sleep at a time. 

Strangely, these are the moments that steel his resolve. It’s not when Ryo’s confidently manic, running amok and barely held in check by hysteria. It’s these quieter moments, tucked together in his old room, waiting out the tremors in him. That’s when he knows that terror gnaws at Ryo like it gnaws at anyone else. 

Grief’s an ugly thing. Folding him in his hands, he’s got to withstand Ryo shivering, read into his agony like Braille, like it’s a communicable thing, how pain goes both ways. He keeps at it, at _this_ , until Ryo’s mustered up enough of himself to shrug him off and back away, tears welling up. He’s a crybaby, through and through.

  


  


* * *

  


  


These days, there’s a distance between him and Miki. It’s gradual, at first, but there’s a gradually widening gulf between them. Some of it’s due to the secrets he’s boiled away into excuses, explaining away the late-night excursions and the new sharpness to his features as puberty. But arguably this divide is more like growing pains.

She’s sitting across from him today, scribbling out an essay across from him. The words spill out across the margin, unconstrained by the cold logic of neat handwriting or orderliness. She’s an honors student now, set right at the top of the class, but she still carries around that foot-long knife around with her.

His own paper remains half-done, one measly paragraph to spin circles around. Miki’s aptitude for picking up on this tidbit knows no opponent, as he listens on. “Don’t think so hard about it, “ she remarks, “just keep writing until something clicks.”

“Right. Easy for you to say.” Chagrin’s hot on his breath. Demon possession didn’t cure human emotions like embarrassment, or his lack of prowess when it comes to words. 

“I’m here doing this with you now, aren’t I? There shouldn’t be any problems now.”

By way of response, he leans forward, prowess of a killer in his silence, and flicks her forehead.

“Hey!” Miki’s face collapses into a frown, rubbing at her forehead.

“C’mon. Let’s go somewhere today.”

Thirty minutes later, they’re stranded in the park. The day itself is uncharted after a whole weekend of being cooped inside. Akira trails after her, browsing the trees, stepping with no degree of uncertainty. Instead of that confidence he was searching for, they find shade under what it might be the biggest tree in the vicinity. 

When Akira settles himself on the grass, Miki slides her back against the trunk, and they’re facing each other again, side by side.

“It’s a nice day, isn’t it? So peaceful,” she says after a while, the uproarious shouts of children playing around them reduced to background noise. “Are you going to tell me why you called me out here, or should I guess?”

So much he could say, too, to fill the space. Banality after banality, because of course the way to hell is paved with good intentions. No good deed goes unpunished, and what does that make him if he can’t even be halfway decent anymore?

“Something like that, yeah. I can’t hide anything from you.” Akira slumps.

Not betrayal after all, but insecurity. Everything’s going right, but wrong. She doesn’t remember Ghelmer or the devastation that wracked her home, and he doesn’t bring it up. Maybe he is going off the deep end, plunged into a downward spiral.

Yet he’s calm, just by looking at her: little by little, his dissatisfaction ebbs.

“My bad. Thing is, I forgot how nosy you are.” That earns Akira a jab in his side that he takes in relative good grace. “Remember how it was when we first met? I couldn’t even talk to you without stuttering.”

“True. You’re only a fire alarm sometimes now.”

“When have I ever done that in front of you?

“You really want me to list them all out? There’s also—”

“Hey—!”

Miki continues laughing, completely nonplussed, like nothing’s changed. Akira’s always had the sneaking suspicion she couldn’t lie if she wanted to, incapable of anything like subterfuge. Maybe he martyrs her, sees too much of what he wants to see instead of how she is, selfish and sweet to a fault.

That’s what he’s trying to protect. His aims have never been so high or lofty as saving humanity. He’s not a saint. He never wanted to be one.

When his head falls slack, Miki crawls forward, sneaks her hands onto his shoulders. They’re close, and he drops with her, sprawled out into the grass. Their faces are only inches part. Every part of her is scattered in light, dripping through the leaves.

Akira stares at her, deeply, like he’s drinking her face in, until the feeling is seething between them. It’s latent, barely touched-upon, and if he only held her, maybe he could pour his heart out. The lump sum of his cautiousness is sitting in his throat right now. 

But there’s the question it presents, unconcealed: if she needs him more than he needs her, or if it’s the opposite, if he’s just looking for something to ground him as everything else spins erratically off axis.

Miki tugs away once the pressure hits its breaking point, up and away, dusting away at her knees. Her voice remains cheery throughout, all the same.

“You’ve changed, Akira.”

  


  


* * *

  


  


The days grow longer, then longer still.

Towards the end of everything, this topsy-turvy ride into moral decline, he’s fucking Ryo into a stupor. 

It was only fifteen minutes ago that Ryo asked without fanfare (late night, brusquely shoving his hands on Akira for a hot-heavy kiss, frenetic from the liquor and whatever cocktail of drugs is stirring around in his system). Beseeching him.

It’s disengagement first before enthrallment. Despite the sounds scraping to get free, damned upstream in his throat, Ryo’s as languid as ever. The messy run-off of lube smarting his hands, smeared over his fingers, sawed inside, then out.

He’s got a spine that doesn’t snap when Akira applies pressure on it, nor when he spears him full to the hilt. Like the backbone of the devil, like Jacob’s ladder, the tenuous connection between heaven and earth. Ryo’s a study in physicality, straining to take him when split open on his dick. Small around him, he’s tangled in his clothes, calves sliding around his waist.

Slick with sweat, Akira grunts, an apropos of nothing. His wings are threatening to tear out of his back. Amon’s chattering away somewhere in his brain, a vicious contrast to the gasps lunging out of Ryo where they’re violently crushed together on the bed. He tunes it out.

Ryo only stops once, long enough in the struggle to dig his fingers into Akira’s wrists, nails gnashing into his skin, clawing a home there.  
Fair’s fair, though. Akira’s mouth is ringed on him, teeth stamped firmly to the no-man’s land between the jut of his damp collarbones and his shoulder, leaving his presence to blotch up hours later, aching down the skin.

Ryo’s so beautiful it’s perverse. Even as he’s bruising him, Akira’s rocking into him with each thrust, hands over his hipbones, pulling him down in the handful of seconds before release.

Afterwards, they’re teetering on the edge, like the ramifications of it still haven’t clarified. The strange desolation haunts Ryo, soft and spilling warmth even when he’s vicious, crowding fingers around his shoulder blades. 

Then the reversal, as Ryo’s fingers skate around his ribs and tug him down for the count, parting Akira’s legs even when they’re both splitting at the seams with oversensitivity. “Think it’s my turn now.”

The sound that’s forced out of Akira is high with adrenaline, the rush never quite leaving his bones.

  


  


* * *

  


  


Akira’s eighteen when Ryo takes humanity as a collective— everyone he’s ever loved or hated— to an early grave.

When it came down to it, they weren’t undone by the demons and the resultant invasion. They turned on themselves, bludgeoning each other to death. He leaves the Makimuras, the touch of Miki’s hands lingering briefly on his back. Her voice, a deep wound in his mind. _(I feel like I’ll never see you again.)_

Ryo— no, Satan, he’s amending that mistake now— is waiting at the end of the world, the sun drinking in his hair, stung with light.

Hasn’t it all gone his way from the beginning? The guy’s talking even before he’s approached, spouting off flattery as deflection, right after denouncing him as a demon on live television. Akira’s blood is crawling in sync with his temper, even though he listens— listens on and on to his deranged talk of mankind’s extinction, the new era of demons fast approaching.

_“Do you regret it? You betrayed me— betrayed all of mankind— why?”_

“I miss how you were,” Ryo says, playing witness to Akira’s steadily ramping horror. “If it was possible to keep you how you were before you merged with Amon, I would have. But this is the only way you can survive in the new world.”

It’s not a real answer. Akira’s lapsed into silence, attempting to decipher a non-sequitur. There’s no love in what he hears, only possession. 

“You’re no longer human. So join me. You can’t go back anymore, but you can still move forward.”

When Ryo turns toward the sun, it’s like he’s devoured by it. Amidst the dilapidation of buildings torn down to rubble, he’s glowing brighter than anything.

  


  


* * *

  


  


Miki’s head is the heaviest thing he’s ever carried, worse than that time he’d bled out at Sirene’s behest, staring through that hole she’d punctured clean through him, awaiting his death.

Despair’s heavy. Despair’s a blade in the pit of his stomach, sawing through muscle and tissue, and whatever’s left of him is rearing to the surface as hate. Amon’s wrenching at him from the inside, but there are still things left to do, even now. 

He can’t be kind or forgiving. He can’t falter, either.

And Akira goes.

  


  


* * *

  


  


Someplace, somewhere, another time, maybe he’ll get this right. He’ll change, but just enough, and he’ll save Miki, convince Ryo to stay at his side.

Looking up, he can’t hold onto thoughts anymore. The moon’s luminous. And Satan, no, _Ryo_ is nestled beside him, like before, only he’s weeping in earnest. It’s bewildering, with his vision swimming in and out of focus. The world around him is getting darker and darker, and his eyes are too heavy to keep open, to answer—

  



End file.
